“How old are you if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Fifty-eight.”
“What? Really? You don’t look a day over forty.”
“I appreciate that, but don’t ever let the exterior fool you about what the landscape’s like on the interior.”
“So how long have you been with the FBI?”
“Nineteen years. I was law enforcement before that, and Army before that.”
“What’d you do in the Army?”
“This and that. Nothing too exciting.” He turned and looked at her. “Can I ask you something now?”
“Sure.”
“Why are you here?”
“What do you mean?”
“Benjamin’s clearly a fool and the virus is contained on an island. It’s unlikely it’ll get out. Why did you risk your life coming to this place just to see a woman who is rumored to have survived it?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense to me either but I just had a feeling that this is where I had to be.” She folded her arms, leaning against the glass of the large window. “I think about those people on the island. Seeing loved ones dying slowly with no one around to help. I can’t stand it. When I close my eyes, their faces are painted on my lids.”
“They did nothing to deserve that, but you did nothing to deserve the guilt you’re feeling now. The virus was a force of nature, like a tornado. You couldn’t control it.”
“No, but I could’ve stayed and helped. At least I could’ve tried harder to stay.”
“And you’d be dead just like the rest of them. Who exactly would that have helped, Dr. Bower?”
“Sam,” Duncan said, “you’re going to want to see this.”
Samantha walked over. There was a YouTube clip playing on Duncan’s cell phone. It was of a news broadcast from Los Angeles. The broadcast ran for a total of five minutes and twenty-seven seconds, but Sam only heard one line. It was a single sentence that rang in her ears and made her knees feel like they were about to buckle:
And again, for those viewers just tuning in, a case of the deadly Honolulu virus known as Agent X has been reported at Good Samaritan Hospital here in Los Angeles.
CHAPTER 39
Ralph Wilson was at LAX within six hours of hearing the news. It was a red-eye flight and he didn’t arrive until 2:00 a.m. Pacific, which was 4:00 a.m. Eastern. He felt a fatigue he hadn’t felt since his days as a resident at Cedars Sinai, running from room to room in the ER on thirty-six-hour shifts, hoping he wouldn’t fall asleep as he sat down to do a patient intake.
He raced through the airport and opted to grab one of the cabs that were ever present outside on the curb instead of renting a car. He stepped out into the night air. It was warm and had a slight taste of exhaust in it. Two cabs were parked at the curb. One was driven by a white man, the other by a black woman. He chose the white male and sat in the back.
“Good Samaritan Hospital.”
“You got it.”
The cab pulled away and they began to drive. He rolled down his window, hoping for fresh air, but instead got lungfuls of exhaust and low hanging smog. He rolled the window back up.
“What you doin’ out at this hour?” the cabbie said.
“What’s that?”
“What you doin’ out at this hour? Most guys that ride in here with suits as nice as yours don’t pop in at two in the mornin’.”
He shook his head as he stared out the window. “Cleaning up other people’s messes. That seems to be all I do nowadays.”
“Better than causin’ ‘em.”
They rode through sections of the city that Ralph hadn’t been to in decades. He had lived here once, long ago. Back when the city wasn’t exploding with crime and the police were actually seen as the good guys. One thing he remembered vividly was taking walks around Echo Park every night. There would be families walking dogs, mothers pushing strollers, women jogging alone. Those things were impossible to do safely now. The city had transformed itself in such a short amount of time. Cities were like people; tragedy and heartbreak molded them. Pain molded them. Over time, they were unrecognizable.
On the corner of Wilshire several women in lingerie or fur coats with tall high heels paced along the sidewalk. They smiled to him and he smiled back. In a year, many of them would be dead or in jail. During his stay here for graduate school, he had conducted a study on the spread of disease among young prostitutes aged fifteen to twenty-five. He had bought them meals in exchange for their cooperation and most were eager to do it; their pimps only allowing enough food so they didn’t starve but that they were always hungry.
He had gone back into the population in exactly one year to track the results and couldn’t find a single person he had used. They were all gone, fresh new faces replacing them.
“Good Samaritan,” the cabbie said.
Ralph looked up and saw that they were in front of the hospital. He dug out some cash from his wallet and handed it to the man, not bothering to count it. There was only one piece of luggage: a black doctor’s bag like a physician from the 1950s would carry. He grabbed it and stepped outside.
The hospital was several stories of dull brick and appeared much like the police headquarters in the movie Dragnet. There were palm trees up in front and a few ambulances lined next to each other. Two of the drivers were sitting on the hood, smoking, and they stared silently as Ralph walked by and through the sliding glass doors of the ER.
The reception area wasn’t staffed and he noticed a few people hanging out in a room nearby; a nurse and probably the two receptionists that should have been at the desk. Ralph waited a moment to see if they’d noticed him and then walked around the desk. There were a few charts lying out and he glanced through them quickly. He ruffled through some papers that were stacked neatly in a pile and then looked behind him to a large white board that had been made into a grid with marker.
The grid contained names and room numbers of patients. They were in blue with the names of the treating physicians and nurses in orange. Except for one. At the bottom of the list was a patient in red marker: John Doe. Under the diagnosis square of the grid, for patient John Doe, it simply said Flu.
Ralph glanced at the room number and then headed through the large double doors leading into the treatment area. There was another set of double doors and this one required swiping a key card or buzzing in. He went back out and looked at the board again before heading back and pushing a button on the intercom.
“Can I help you?”
“Yes, I’m Jake Sanders. Melissa Sanders’ brother. She’s in room 110.”
“Okay, I’ll buzz you in.”
As he came into the treatment area he smiled widely at the staff and headed toward room 110. He came to 110 and looked back; the nurse at the front desk glanced at him. He smiled again and went inside.
Melissa Sanders was asleep but the light over her bed was on. Ralph reached outside and grabbed the chart that was in a holder against the wall. He flipped through it. The treating physician thought it might be Alport Syndrome, an inherited disorder that damages the vessels in the kidneys. He stared at her a moment and then stepped outside and replaced the chart. The nurse was staring at her computer. He headed down the hall.
The linoleum and harsh lighting as well as the smell of antiseptic made him miss his treating days. When he would get so tired he’d forget to eat for periods of twenty hours or more. But there was camaraderie there, a shared purpose among the staff and physicians. His days were now filled with board meetings and administrators and he sometimes longed to just hang out in a lounge and gossip.
He was at room 153 when he heard boots stomping behind him. Two security guards were running down the corridor straight toward him. He glanced into the room and saw the open window and wondered if he could make it down the street and call a cab somewhere before the police got here.